By Matthew Yoshimoto
Popular statistics presented in the media may paint a picture of Asian Americans thriving, but is that the whole truth? That seemingly positive image conceals significant internal disparities masked by aggregated data on the AAPI community—a group of immense diversity that cannot be reduced to a single, homogeneous cohort.
To address this issue, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) has launched a new funding opportunity through its Transforming Public Health Data Systems program. The initiative invites proposals for a comprehensive research project, offering up to $800,000 in support to enhance the representation of Asian American communities by disaggregating data.
Tina J. Kauh, senior program officer at RWJF, said that initiatives focused on disaggregating data are crucial for accurately capturing the diverse backgrounds and needs within the Asian American population.
“It helps to make populations that are currently invisible visible,” Kauh told AsAmNews. “There’s a vicious cycle where, because everyone’s assuming that Asian Americans are doing well, nobody is being put in to collect more data, and then sadly that’s not going to show the need.”
Despite decades of effort, progress in disaggregating data within the Asian American population has been slow. Kauh noted that implementing well-established recommendations for disaggregation is challenging because it is impractical to categorize every Asian country individually.
To address this, a primary goal of the research is to develop and recommend meaningful subgroups within the population to promote an equitable health science knowledge system. Kauh also stressed the importance of incorporating community voices into the research process: “It’s not just research done by researchers; it’s about engaging community voices to ensure quality.”
“There’s a saying in research that, what gets measured is what gets changed. The mediator in that relationship is, what gets measured is what gets the resources so that change can happen. And if you understand where the resources are needed, then you can better target those to address the needs that are out there,” Kauh shared with AsAmNews.
Efforts to disaggregate data face various challenges. Kauh explained that the process can be expensive due to the need for larger sample sizes, which require additional resources for data collection, coding and analysis. She added participants might have concerns about confidentiality and the researchers’ motives, complicating the data collection process.
Anika Dandekar, senior analyst at Data for Progress, a progressive think tank that conducts weekly surveys of around 1,200 voters, highlighted the difficulty and cost of obtaining large sample sizes to draw reliable conclusions about the AAPI community.
“While data collection among the AAPI community has improved in recent years, we need greater investment in polling that can capture large, diverse samples of AAPI people. Only then will we be able to disaggregate data and illuminate disparities among subgroups within the AAPI community,” Dandekar said to AsAmNews.
With the AAPI community being the fastest-growing demographic group in the U.S. and possessing diverse needs and wants, understanding disparities through disaggregated data is increasingly essential, explained Akil Vohra, Director of Policy at AAPI Data, a leading research and policy organization.
Vohra said part of AAPI Data’s mission is to provide the community with tools to access and understand data. He highlighted the organization’s monthly surveys on pressing issues such as politics, climate change, abortion, and education, as well as its innovative digital platform, which offers users data-driven insights through disaggregated data.
By using disaggregated data, Vohra explained organizations can identify and address specific needs within diverse populations, advocate for targeted policy changes and secure proper funding for initiatives that effectively serve individual communities.
“We want to think about measures that they can take to better understand the community and be in better service. At the end of the day, that’s the goal of the government, to be able to serve the population,” Vohra told AsAmNews. “We want to be able to draw attention to [all subgroups’] matters, to make sure that our communities are fully part of the American tapestry.”
Note: The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is one of the grantors of AsAmNews, providing the publication with $150,000 over two years.
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